Quarter 9 - Week 3

The assignments begin to pile up. You can see the difference between quarters when you have just two courses, and when you have three. We have had three quizzes already till date, and midterms are due in a couple of weeks. It's a fast quarter!

Consumer Behaviour

This week was with related to consumer perceptions and attitudes. We looked into what makes people think of products in particular lights, and what are the reasons for it. It can vary... there's stuff like classical conditioning, where you associate the product with some known experiences and hence keep buying it. There are different types of positioning, where you can either be informative, or base it on affective needs. Emotions are a huge driver, and we see how our good friends Maslow and Freud have unearthed elements that can be used in less-than-noble ways. For e.g. fear is a major motivator. So if you wanted to sell some sort of hair cream, or face cream... some brands try and position it on what happens if you DONT use it. Hence the 'avoid hair loss', or the 'anti-aging creams'. In order to avoid what might be inevitable, or essentially undesirable, you end up buying such products to be a little happier for a while longer.

And hence we got into the topic of motivation. To be motivated, is essentially to remove that which is causing some sort of a botheration for you, and once removed you go to your normal state. Like you, I initially thought.. that can't be it.. it's driving you to achieve results, that's what motivation is. But let's see it carefully. When you motivate your team to perform faster/better, you're essentially trying to tell them that meeting that deadline/achieving those results is good for the person, probably because they won't get punished if they DO meet it, or even more subtly, they will lose the reward if they dont meet it. Hence, there's an inner discomfort, to do something. And therefore the team does what is required, blinded in the notion that they're doing it on their own. That's just downright dangerous, but effective.

Strategic Leadership

Two cases this week, the first was that of Ranbaxy, and how they moved from being a domestic pharmaceutics distributor, to a global pharma corporation. The prof started the class with the answer to the question that was apparently posed to him by a few of our classmates... what is the takeaway that we're looking for out of this course? And so, he shows us the difference between what we learnt back in Q1, and what we're learning now. The funda, he says, is not to accept the frameworks that you studied way back in a blind fashion, but to go to the depths of it to understand why it works, and what are the boundary conditions. All the cases we've done so far have stuck their thumbs up to Porter and his five forces, not to mention the Resource Based View model. So he's trying to help us ask 'Why?'. What's the reason certain models fail, and when is that. What are the new upcoming frameworks that we should toss around at the back of our minds, mindful of the fact that the model could be a generic thing around which we could find loopholes.

This course is all about helping us ask the right questions, not finding the right answers (Fundoo global gyaan, but it can be inspiring when you're in a class). And so he takes us through the aspects of why and how Ranbaxy became the powerhouse it did... simply because the new blood that came in took it out of a slowing progress curve onto a much larger one.

The next session was about the Indian Software Industry - why is it the way it is? I can tell you, from the readings for the day, it looked so much like we should have actually failed. The sentiments in the class were approximately the same. When the prof showed us the NASSCOM vision that we'd be 225 billion in 2022, everyone looks skeptical. Prof. asks why, and we say, our cost arbitrage wont work anymore, not enough intellectual workforce, reactive organizations and most importantly, no local demand. After hearing all this, the prof keeps quiet, staring at the class.... for all of 5 seconds. In the remaining one hour of the session, he took us on a whirlwind tour of what we've accomplished as Indians, and shoved our noses into what we had achieved and mentioned 'You've done all of this, but when someone asks you if you can do better, how the hell can you say that we weren't capable in the first place! What you guys told me, any layman on the street can tell me, but what did you see about what actually happened?'. A major motivator session if you ask me... all of a sudden I feel proud to be in the Indian Software Industry. In case if you're curious, the reasons were mainly the fact that we adopted processes that helped convert software delivery from a chaotic, creative craft to a controlled science. We went together to sell our offerings, as NASSCOM, to those in need of it. We took advantage of the greatest catalytic element at the time, the Y2K bug, and once it was over in 2000, we continued to build on top of it, knowing that the catalytic moment that came for us can not be had by any other nation, the opportunity was already gone!

He then went on to show us what types of software industries have continued their growth, how many of them are plateauing out... and at the end of the session, he closes with the simple statement, 'What got us here, won't get us there. I'm looking at those potential people who can take us there, the question is if you're brave enough to take this challenge on'.

That's just awesome.

Personal Interpersonal Effectiveness Workshop

There were waaayyyy too many readings this week. And more importantly, way too many assignments from them. Things that we really had to think about, and think hard. Introspection isn't very easy, when you have to really confront yourself with the questions of why we're doing what we're doing, and what is it that we want to do from hereon. There were a lot deeper ones related to how do you perceive yourself and how do others perceive you. Are you ok with that interpretation, if not, why aren't you ok with it? What would you like to do to change. Phew! H.E.A.V.Y.!

This week's session was meant to make us relook at what makes us and our interactions what they are. There was also this bit about meditation, which I'm yet to complete. But I think it's got something that might be of help. At the end of the day, I won't be able to make decisions to the best of my ability if my thoughts aren't clear. Hopefully meditation is one way of doing so. We also continued to talk about what goes into a person's vision, and how does he want to approach it, what are the fears we would face etc. There's not much to be specific about, all the discussions kept meandering around this... so that's the takeaway.

The readings and exercises for next week are a lot tougher. We have two cases in SL, one presentation in CB, some intensive daily exercises in PIEW and an application problem in CB as well. Sundays are no longer fitted in my calendar.